NATIVES. 61 
two settlements that have been named after them. The 
people are very unlike any Africans I met during my 
journey, as they are much more intelligent and more highly 
civilized. They are light in color, with slender bodies, 
and do not average in height over five feet four inches, their 
features showing strongly their Asiatic origin. They are 
well clothed in cloth of their own manufacture, and their 
necks and arms are loaded down with heavy necklaces and 
bracelets, made of lead, brass, ivory, or beads. The women 
wear a brass ornament resembling a double cylinder over 
their foreheads, while suspended from their heads, over 
their ears, are two enor- 
mous brass rings. The 
boys are all obliged 
to learn Arabic, and 
countless are the in- 
scriptions from the Ko- 
ran, bound in the form 
of books, which are 
to be found in the 
tombs. 
Besides the five shin- 
ing white tombs, there 
were Several stone 
mosques in the town. There was also a large artificial 
pond, from which a stone aqueduct led into the fields for 
purposes of irrigation. About ten years ago there was a 
‘great epidemic of cholera at Sheikh Husein, which had 
swept away four-fifths of the inhabitants, leaving only 
about five hundred permanent dwellers. The poor natives 
knew so little about sanitary conditions that they buried 
their dead around the edge of the pond from which they 
drank. In great contrast to their so-called Christian rulers, 
the Abyssinians, I found these people to be very moral in 
